Hybrid Mobile Apps

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I came across a question – “Questions on Hybrid Apps” in one of the Forums, and i thought it’s worth writing a blog post, so that it will help others (at least for my blog post visitors 😉 ) May be many of us have doubts about Hybrid Mobile Apps. Let me provide my thoughts –

Native Apps – Developed using Platform specific SDK (Software Development Kit). Native Mobile Apps built on platform SDK’s. For example, if you wish to develop an iOS App, then you may have to download the Apple iOS SDK and start building app. Now, you thought of powering Android users with your app, then you may have to download Android SDK and start building the app from scratch.

We can achieve PORTABILITY – write once and deploy on multiple platforms.

2. How to access the device features like Contacts, Camera, GPS etc.,?

You can definitely access to all the device features through – APACHE CORDOVA / IONIC FRAMEWORK / TRIGGER.IO . These plugins will help us in accessing OS features through their API’s. Same is well documented in their respective sites.

3. Can i deploy the Apps to Stores for different platforms?

Yeah. You can deploy your app to multiple platforms App Stores. Consumers can download you app just like the Native Apps.

4. How do you control the layout of an Hybrid app considering it’s one app which will be run on many different devices with many different layouts?

Responsive Web Design. Using CSS 3 media queries you can achieve responsive web design. It allows to design layouts for different resolutions of the devices.

5. Which development framework is better Apache Cordova or Ionic Framework or Trigger.io or any other?

Hard to answer. Most of the Hybrid Apps are developed on Apache Cordova. It’s Open Source. Even Ionic Framework internally uses Apache Cordova. Trigger.io is licensed and you may have to pay for it.

Each of the framework will have their own Pros and Cons. It’s better to do through analysis on choosing the right one for you!